New San Francisco policy would limit how long homeless families can stay in shelters
The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) will begin a new policy on Dec. 10 that will put stricter limits in place for how long homeless families can stay in shelters and will change the prioritization process.
An HSH spokesperson provided CBS News Bay Area with the following statement:
"Family homelessness is a crisis that impacts some of the most vulnerable people in our community. To better address the needs of families in our community, HSH has been working closely with family providers and people with lived experiences of homelessness to develop key reforms to the family homelessness response system. These reforms are focused on shelter length of stay, the family shelter waitlist, and shelter prioritization. These reforms are intended to ensure that our family homelessness response system is more efficient and better able to meet the needs of families in our community. Reforms related to housing prioritization and placement will be made as part of the ongoing Coordinated Entry reform process."
According to HSH, the primary changes to the shelter length include reinstating the length of stay to 90 days, plus up to three extensions based on family circumstances. A family will lose eligibility for a shelter extension if they decline three permanent housing offers, however, there will be exceptions.
The idea is to have beds available for families with the most critical needs, such as those currently living on the street or in a vehicle.
But Yasmeen Williams, who has lived through family homelessness herself, called the change, "heartbreaking."
"Three months isn't adequate time to be able to secure housing, to get resources that you need to get back on your feet," she said. "There came a point towards the end of our stay in the shelter where I started to give up hope. We finally got housing. I don't know where I would have been if I only had three months."
In the blink of an eye, she and her sister became homeless in 2022.
"We jumped from shelter to shelter, two or three, a few couches, and we finally got housing in San Francisco a year later," she said. "I feel like people have a perception of what homelessness looks like. Everybody who is going through it has their own unique story."
Aside from the changes to the length of stay, the new HSH policy changes its approach to the shelter waitlist as well – to prioritize people living in the following situations.
- Living in a place not meant for human habitation
- Residing in shelter/hotel w/exit date of less than 14 days
- Residing in a residence and being evicted w/in 14 days
- Leaving an institution and was homeless prior
- Fleeing domestic violence
- Pregnant people or people reuniting with children transferring from shelter for adults without children
- Families living in a shelter without 24-hour access to amenities
Furthermore, families that are already living in shelters for 14 or more days with 24-hour access to amenities, or, in habitable SROs will no longer be placed on the waitlist, per the spokesperson.
"We should be moving in the other direction. There was a 98% increase in family homelessness between 2022 and 2024," said Hope Kamer, the Director of Public Policy and External Affairs for Compass Family Services. "We have more and more families becoming homeless with no housing available, and this is also going to decrease the availability of shelter."
Kamer believes the policy changes stem from a bigger issue that is beyond HSH.
"I just think that it is fundamentally unacceptable that we are not resourcing this problem to scale. They are doing their best with very limited resources. We need more resources," she said. "We're limiting who can be in these shelters without adding any resources to the end of the continuum. It is going to make it seem as though there are less families in need because the number of families that are eligible to be on the wait list will become artificially truncated. But the need is extreme and it's only growing."
Like Williams, Kamer fears the changes will end up with more families living on the streets.
"Providers want flow. We want families into a shelter for a short shelter stay, interim housing, and permanent housing solutions. But what is happening with these changes is that a family is going to flow from the shelter back onto the street," she said. "For some families, it means that we could have avoided an instance of homelessness with problem-solving funds. But instead, we're going to let them hit rock bottom before we offer any help."
HSH believes the reforms to the policy will ultimately make the family homelessness response system more efficient and effective.
Williams fears it will make it harder for homeless families to make it through.
"All you want to do is to be able to provide and protect the person and people that you care for, especially when it's a child," she said. "It's hypocritical of what San Francisco says it actually wants to achieve with the homeless population because it pushes people back into unsafe conditions."
